Revelations 20:1-3
by All Galimatias
Summary: And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended…


The thing with a bottomless pit is that once you get used to the falling, it's really not that bad. It's not pleasant, naturally, but it's not like its torture; and Crowley knows all about torture, in all its different forms. It's just… falling. Endlessly downwards. But at least, if you know a pit is bottomless, than you don't have to worry about the splat at the end. In any case, Crowley is technically a _fallen _angel, and it's really probably time that the falling part caught up with him. So he isn't, or wouldn't be, that bothered, or so he tells himself.

If not for the fact that there's a bloody useless angel falling with him, though the endless darkness at an incomprehensible speed, and apparently having a fit of conscience, far, far too late for it to be of any use to anybody.

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear," Aziraphale muttered to himself. His voice is audible, somehow, and close, even though Crowley can't actually see the stupid bastard.

"Aziraphale," Crowley snarls in the general direction of the angel's voice, though it's mostly just a wild guess. "What the _hell_ are you doing?"

The stream of anxiety pauses. "Well," Aziraphale says after a few moments, in which they probably fall through a distance roughly equitable to the circumference of the Milky Way. "My job, sort of."

"Sort of. Angel, you just threw yourself into the Abyss." _After me, _Crowley does not say.

"Well, yes. But I threw you in first," Aziraphale pointed out. "So it sort of evens out. Doesn't it?"

"Does it?" Crowley retorted, thinking that he'd smack the angel if he could see him. Or, for that matter, remember what it was like to have a body so he could form himself one, and have a hand to hit the idiot with.

"I put you in fetters—"

"With a _granny knot_, angel."

"And threw you in the pit," Aziraphale recited. "They were the instructions."

"Yes, and to then lock me in, and you weren't quite stupid enough to do that, were you."

Another pause.

"Oh, you're joking. Aziraphale, please tell me that you didn't seal us in."

"Well, that was the second part of the instructions. Nobody said specifically that—"

"Nobody said specifically that you shouldn't jump in too. I mean, why the hell wouldn't you?"

"Crowley dear, calm down, there's really no need for that sort of language."

"No need? Angel, they'll flay you alive."

"Mm," Aziraphale said worriedly. "There is that."

They fell through several more galaxies worth of space.

"Ah well," Crowley said eventually. "We've a thousand years till we get out, whatever happens."

"Yes," said Aziraphale, and there was a flicker somewhere in the darkness—Crowley wasn't sure if it was up, down, or sideways and there was really no way of finding out—and the iridescent shape that was his angelic form appeared briefly before resolving itself into the body Aziraphale had been wearing when they'd both entered the Abyss.

Concentrating, Crowley did the same, skipping straight to his old body and emitting the same soft glow as Aziraphale did. They continued to plummet.

"That's better, anyway," commented Crowley.

"I concur."

"Nothing changes, then. We always have."

Not commenting on that little revelation, so fitting for their situation, Aziraphale shrugged and gave Crowley an absent sort of smile. Like he wasn't currently falling for a demon, through the Abyss, with God knows, very literally, what waiting for them when they landed. Crowley found himself grinning back, despite himself.

"Well, one thousand years," the demon said, offering a hand containing a dark green bottle of red wine out through the blackness to Aziraphale. "Here's to that."

Aziraphale accepted the bottle and poured out a glass.

"I've been meaning to catch up on that David Attenborough series anyway."


End file.
